As March ended its first week Lee believed “the enemy may break out at any time,” yet tried to remain optimistic.55 “If we do our duty I trust we shall not be crushed,” he wrote brother Carter Lee on March 24.56 Yet he passed an unpleasant winter, dining outdoors with his staff, his fingers freezing to tin plate and cup as he ate his soup and hardtack, rarely escaping camp.57 His hands had healed from the accident, but early in March he complained of getting older and sadder, and that considering where he might have done good to others in his life thus far, he found himself “filled with confusion & despair.”58 He was miserable in the cold and wet of the winter, “nor can I expect any pleasure, during this war,” he lamented to Mary.59 The weight of duty pressed ever more on that spirit. “Writing, talking & thinking” took up so much of his time that there was little left for rest, and anxiety ensured scant sleep when he found time for his cot.
“As for my health I suppose I shall never be better,” he mused.60 It troubled him that he had been too busy to escape to see his dying daughter, making all the more painful a false and mean-spirited rumor that Annie Lee died in North Carolina “alone deserted by all” and “an outcast from her home,” because she remained loyal to the Union.61 In that weakened physical and emotional state he fell easy prey to a cold, and by the last Sunday of the month felt too feeble to attend services and prayed alone in his tent.62 At the end of the month he moved for a few days to a nearby house, where he suffered seizures of pain in his chest, back, and arms, from what he assumed was a violent cold, but which may have been something much more serious, either angina or a small heart attack. His doctors thumped his chest “like an old steam boiler before condemning it,” he joked, and April was a fortnight old before he returned to his tent.63
During his own illness Lee worried about the health of his soldiers. The winter was bad, but worse was their dwindling ration. Hearing that soldiers in other armies were better provisioned, he protested to Richmond that “I think this army deserves as much consideration.”64 Part of Longstreet’s goal in being sent south of the James was to gather provisions along the border with North Carolina.65 Lee urged his brother Carter to “set all the farmers to work.”66 Meanwhile, Lee himself ate in Spartan fashion, and his headquarters table offered no bounty. “I am willing to starve myself, but cannot bear my men or horses to be pinched,” he told Mary.67
The continuing manpower problem troubled him. No one ought to resign from the service now, he said, regardless of the reason. With Custis on the president’s private staff, Lee even asked his son to use his influence somehow to get laggards to enlist, suggesting he approach Senator Louis T. Wigfall, an outspoken administration critic, to press the matter.68 Lee crossed boundaries between the military and the political more frequently now, living up to earlier hints. On January 6, learning of Davis’s return from a trip to the western theater, Lee even resorted to sycophancy. “I know that your visit has inspired the people with confidence, & encouraged them to renewed exertions & greater sacrifices in the defence of the country,” he wrote Davis. At the same time, hearing first reports—that proved untrue—that General Bragg had achieved a signal success near Murfreesboro at the close of the year, Lee told the president that “I attribute mainly the great victory of Genl Bragg to the courage diffused by your cheering words & presence.”69 In fact, Davis’s western trip did neither, but Lee needed to ask much from the president in the days ahead, and their relationship was new enough that he did not know that his actions had already won him more good will than any honeyed words.
“If Genl Hooker is going to do anything we shall hear from him soon,” Lee believed on April 3.70 Thinking the army would soon be engaged in active operations, he warned the rabbi in Richmond that he would allow the Jews in his army to celebrate the coming Passover as far as he could, but they might have a more immediate angel of death to confront.71 Then Lee wondered if Hooker intended to stay in position through the summer to keep him occupied, while sending large-scale reinforcements to Kentucky or Tennessee to cooperate with Grant or Rosecrans. When Richmond asked him about supporting armies west of the Appalachians, Lee discouraged sending units from his own army. Instead, he suggested launching another invasion of Maryland.72 Lee might be parochial in thinking first and foremost of his army and his department, but it had delivered the lion’s share of Confederate success and there was good reason not to dissipate its strength to lesser commanders elsewhere.
By mid-April Lee began to press for an offensive himself. A speedy move to the Shenandoah and then into Maryland would clear the valley of Yankees, and force Hooker to withdraw north of the Potomac.73 Rumors came that the Yankees were giving up on taking Vicksburg, Lee’s first mention of Grant by name.74 “I do not think our enemies are so confident of success as they used to be,” he told Mary on April 19. “If we can baffle them in their various designs this year & our people are true to our cause & not so devoted to themselves & their own aggrandisement, I think our success will be certain.” If they held out until the fall of 1864, he believed Northern voters would reject the Republicans and the peace party might be willing to make terms. “We have only to resist manfully,” he predicted.75
As the month wore on Lee tried to glean some insight into Hooker’s intentions, busy enough that he could not spare the few minutes to keep an appointment possibly arranged by Mary. He and Jackson were supposed to sit for Richmond photographer D. T. Cowell, who brought his camera to the army.76 Cowell and his firm planned to reproduce the photo for distribution and sale to the public, something that would identify Lee with his cause in the public mind even more than his name in the papers. “My portrait I think can give pleasure to no one,” he protested to Mary, “& should it resemble the original would not be worth having.” He was already displeased with a woodcut of himself in the English press. Lee had sat for Confederate photographers before, and he would again, but at the moment his spirits were low. He felt “oppressed by what I have to undergo for the first time in my life,” he confessed. Instead of the faces of sad old men, Mary should “get the portraits of the young, the happy, the gay.”77
By April 27 Lee suspected Hooker might cross the Rappahannock, and if he did it would be by the fords above Fredericksburg. Almost daily Hooker sent detachments up and down his side of the river, trying to confuse Lee as to which was real and which a feint, and Lee took them as such.78 But there was no mistaking the news that a large force of Yankees began crossing twenty miles upstream from Fredericksburg on April 28, nor that two Yankee corps crossed just below Fredericksburg almost in Lee’s front. Reports of more crossings reached him, making it apparent that Hooker was on the move. Lee concluded that the corps in his front were to hold him in place while those upriver would hit his left flank and rear. At once he began a flurry of communications to the president, the adjutant general, and others, imploring them to send all available units, and to keep the bridges over the North and South Anna Rivers intact, implying that he might have to fall back to that line to protect Richmond and keep his supply line open.79
Again Lee was surprised, not from want of vigilance, but thanks to effective security in Hooker’s army. Lee had no alternative but to shape his movements on Hooker’s, and survival depended on how he reacted. While he pulled in his own right flank to face the Federal corps below Fredericksburg, he concentrated one division that evening several miles west at a small crossroads called Chancellorsville, in the heart of a tangled region of woods and brush known locally as The Wilderness. The enemy corps closing in on his left would have to pass through that first, and Lee hoped to delay them while he augmented and repositioned his army. With Longstreet away Lee had just over 50,000 men; he expected Hooker might have 160,000.
On April 30 the division at Chancellorsville could not hold its ground and withdrew. By late afternoon the Yankees had a clear road to Lee’s left rear. Like Grant, Lee was again lucky in the man he faced. After conceiving a brilliant offensive, Hooker turned cautious and halted. Even before that benison, Lee d
ecided to blunt the enemy advance with an attack. But which wing of the Army of the Potomac was the real spearhead—the crossing at Fredericksburg or the corps closing around Chancellorsville? The Union artillery on Stafford Heights commanding the ground in front of Fredericksburg persuaded him that he could accomplish nothing there, so he took the only alternative he had. He tried to push back the Yankees at Chancellorsville, and he guessed right. On May 1, leaving just a few brigades facing two Federal corps at Fredericksburg, Lee launched Jackson’s 30,000 men and 15,000 in two divisions of Longstreet’s still with the army, toward more than 70,000 under Hooker. Lee dared to court disaster to prevent one.
Grant’s own disaster at Holly Springs forced him to pull back to the Tallahatchie River, but as usual, he reacted by considering “what move next to make” after he reopened his line of communications. Meanwhile, he learned something in the withdrawal. Denied the supplies destroyed in the raid, his men and his large wagon trains “fed entirely off of the country” during the retreat, and did so for some days thereafter.80 That might be useful knowledge in the future.
As ever, he confronted problems directly, and even as he ordered his cavalry out to run down Van Dorn and Forrest, Grant began dealing with the commander at Holly Springs and others whose weaknesses emerged in the crisis. Doing what Lee would never do, he relieved officers of their commands immediately, including a colonel of cavalry for reluctance to obey orders, and taking Brigadier General Leonard Ross’s brigade away for a similar offense. Yet on getting a reasonable explanation, Grant reinstated the colonel, and restored Ross’s brigade, though only after a reprimand for acting in the heat of the moment.81 By the end of December most of the damage to the railroad from Memphis to Corinth was repaired, but hearing that some citizens in Memphis threatened to disrupt the line again, he vowed to depopulate northern Mississippi and evict every family in the city whose loyalty he doubted. For every guerilla raid on the rail line, he intended to eject ten prominent secessionist families from his lines.82
The disaster made Grant long for word from Sherman. On the last day of the year he heard that Sherman had taken Vicksburg, but he could get no details. On New Year’s Day another report said Vicksburg had not fallen after all. A day later Grant decided to “make a dash” to cut Confederate communications in west Tennessee to allow him to send reinforcements to Sherman to finish the job. Finally, on January 3, a five-day-old letter from Sherman brought news of heavy fighting and some progress, yet reports elsewhere said that Sherman had taken the citadel. On January 4 Grant gave in to his optimism and prematurely wired Halleck that “Vicksburg has fallen,” though he had no details. All he could get was rumor. Grant sarcastically spoke of an informant who claimed “he had heard somebody else say that some one he had forgotten who, had seen somebody else who had seen a Copy of the Chicago Times of the 27th which said that Lee was near Washington Halleck was removed the place offered to McClellan Cabinet dissolved and things generally in confusion.”83 For the first time Grant mentioned Lee by name, and in jest.
The absurdity of it punctuated Grant’s hunger for real news from Sherman, a want of intelligence made more galling with the news that Rosecrans had repulsed the Confederate Army of Tennessee in year-end action at Murfreesboro south of Nashville.84 It was an equivocal victory, but on the heels of Fredericksburg it boosted Union morale, which Grant had hoped to be doing on the Mississippi. Hearing nothing more direct from Sherman, Grant’s confidence began to ebb, then on January 9, eleven days after the fact, he got definitive word that Sherman had been repulsed in two days of hard fighting just north of Vicksburg, and had withdrawn his command more than a hundred miles upriver to Napoleon, Arkansas. Grant decided to leave immediately for Memphis to “do everything possible for the capture of Vicksburg.”85
He arrived the next day, and as one of his first acts sent an engineer to Rear Admiral David D. Porter’s fleet. The engineer’s instructions were to move down the west bank to survey the remains of an unfinished canal that cut across the west end of a tongue of land created by a tight bend in the river. At the eastern tip of the tongue sat Vicksburg.86 Hours after learning Sherman had failed, Grant was planning a new approach to seize control of the Mississippi. His army lay split between northern Mississippi and Arkansas, fed by an attenuated supply line to Memphis. Porter was anxious to be of service but had nowhere really to go. Confederate cavalry threatened overland communications and cut off his one land route of approach to Vicksburg. Grant never intended to take it from the river side. His plan always was to move inland, take the state capital at Jackson, cut off Vicksburg’s communications, isolate the garrison, and then move west to take it by storm or siege. Grant almost always preferred an indirect approach; in this case it was to take his army down the Arkansas and Louisiana side below Vicksburg, and then cross to strike for Jackson from below. That would also put him in supporting distance of Federals under Major General Nathaniel Banks, who was expected to come north from New Orleans to take the bastion Port Hudson, 140 miles south of Vicksburg. If either fortress fell, the victors could combine to take the other, and the river would belong to the Union. But first Grant must get his fleet of transports below Vicksburg to ferry the army across, and that meant facing those batteries.
What followed was a reprise of Lieutenant Grant of California and Oregon. Scarcely landed on the Pacific Coast, he looked for ways to profit from the opportunity, and by simultaneous alternatives. He would grow vegetables for hungry immigrants, raise draft animals to replace worn teams, operate a general goods store, explore lumbering and fur sales, operate a billiard saloon, and more. If one match struck no fire, another might, and even if none came to anything, the work kept him vigorous, mind stimulated and body fit, prepared to capitalize on any avenue that offered promise.87 Coincidentally, while Grant looked at options for offense, Lee employed the same approach as he considered alternative responses to Federal movements. Their strategic vision was identical, conceiving options contingent on enemy actions and unforeseen opportunities. They differed in the atmospheres around their operations, and the risks of failure. No McClernand threatened Lee, no vocal politicians or press carped in his rear, no meddling Lincoln put the occasional stone in his path. Lee’s army was larger than Grant’s, fighting on home ground, and he knew his foe’s goal was Richmond. Failure meant losing the capital, with spiritual, morale, industrial, and social costs perhaps too great to survive. Grant risked less: his army caught in enemy territory, the river left open to Confederate use, a serious blow to Northern morale, and a failure on his record that McClernand would surely use to his advantage. Lee faced national peril; Grant risked personal eclipse.
Then McClernand made his bid. Reaching Napoleon, he assumed command of Sherman’s men and turned them to attack Fort Hindman near Arkansas Post, a few miles up the Arkansas River. Gunboats under its protection could steam down to the Mississippi and threaten McClernand’s supply line to Memphis. He haughtily redesignated his command the “Army of the Mississippi” and, accompanied by Porter, took Fort Hindman on January 11. He intended next to move up the Arkansas to take Little Rock as a diversion to keep Confederates from concentrating on the defense of Vicksburg. Grant rightly viewed it as McClernand’s diversion to attract attention to himself. He had “gone on a wild goose chase” to no useful end, Grant told Halleck.88 To vent his anger, Grant resorted to a managerial tool sometimes used by Lincoln: writing a letter that he did not send. Stating his disapproval, he ordered McClernand to do nothing not directly connected to “the one great result, the capture of Vicksburg.” Then Grant held the letter to give himself time to cool. Two days later he told McClernand of the letter, but only summarized its content in milder tones.89 McClernand was murky ground. He still might be acting on authority from the secretary of war, or even the president. There was no profit in a confrontation until Grant was sure of his footing. He asked Halleck for clarification, and was told he could relieve McClernand and replace him with Sherman or take charge himself, as he chose. O
n January 18 Grant assumed command. McClernand wrote in heat to Grant and Lincoln, insisting that the president make his command independent, but Lincoln backed away, forcing McClernand to obey Grant’s orders to return to the mouth of the Arkansas River.90
Grant met at once with Sherman, Porter, and McClernand, essentially ignoring the latter. Privately, Sherman, Porter, and others expressed their distrust of the man and his motives, erasing any doubts Grant may have had, and he so notified Halleck. He recommended again that both sides of the Mississippi be placed under a single general, and suggested that for maximum efficiency all departments in the region be united under one central command. As senior commander he had a claim on such a position, but preferred to retain direct charge of the Vicksburg campaign. Grant’s modesty was usually genuine, but his past preference for action rather than administrative position argues persuasively that he was sincere.
Sherman and Porter agreed that Vicksburg could not be taken quickly. A series of fortified hills and bayous overflowing from heavy rains covered the upstream approaches, while the city itself was too well defended to be stormed directly from the river.91 Grant already knew that, and had something different in mind. Before leaving Memphis he arranged for mining tools to be sent forward.92 In the summer of 1862 Brigadier General Thomas Williams advanced on Vicksburg after taking Baton Rouge. He was forced to withdraw, but before leaving he spent a month digging an incomplete canal across that tongue of land. If Grant could complete and use it to bypass Vicksburg, he could get his army below.
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